Hi I currently own a very outdated laptop and will be travelling quite a fair bit the next few years so I need something that can run any current games and any of the new video games coming out within the next few years, regardless of whether it runs the newest games on lowest settings or not as long as it runs them.Worth mentioning I'm not looking for any particular brand of GPU so I'm versatile with those and also not very fussed on the CPU I have owned AMD my whole life though, maybe a change to Intel might do me some good? Who knows!

I'm considering one too, was thinking about this: MSI brand. I think I saw them mentioned in a previous gaming laptop thread, although the Dell's look pretty decent spec vs price with the sale that's on so I was eyeing up one of those too.

ATI in my experience has never gone well in laptops. But i'm out of touch on the latest cards, just generally they get hot(er than nvidia cards) which in turn on a small form factor like laptops means bad things happen more often to the laptop (shared heatsink and space etc)

My boss at work recently got some version of that one from Amazon, arrived with a cracked screen (no box damage), sent it back and got a replacement that was stuck on 100% fan constantly, after that he gave up and just got a refund.

He might have just been really unlucky and they seem like decent laptops but from reading about them around the net it seems like the build quality is lower than average with a lot of people also complaining about faulty touchpads.

ATI in my experience has never gone well in laptops. But i'm out of touch on the latest cards, just generally they get hot(er than nvidia cards) which in turn on a small form factor like laptops means bad things happen more often to the laptop (shared heatsink and space etc)

I currently LAN on a macbook pro whose CPU reaches 100 degrees Celsius. That s*** gets hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch (aluminium body). Fun stuff. Still runs though :)

Update by me in case the OP hasn't got one yet, or has but hasn't bothered posting and in case anyone is also looking at one.

I bought an MSI GE60 288AU today and here's my first impressions.

The build quality is quite... well I don't know. It's not "s***", it's just "cheap".

It sits quite solid on the desk and it feels solid when your hands are resting on the keyboard. HOWEVER! The little component covers on the bottom of the laptop are VERY thin and I wouldn't be surprised if they broke if you're not too careful just by picking it up with one hand, grabbing the lid and base at the same time which is something I do quite frequently with my MBP.

Haven't had a chance to test out the gaming abilities yet because I'm still trying to figure out how the hell you use windows 8. 5 minutes in and i'm ready to /wrist. Seriously, who on earth likes windows 8? It's pure s***. On a tablet it might be great but keep it off PC's. Will install a game or two and report back, or not if no one cares.

The keyboard on them is supposed to be designed/built? by steelseries who do good quality mechanical stuff.. but yeah it's still msi i guess and they are cheap on the pocket too. It's not like you can come close to that price on a discounted dell or MBP for the specs.

Sorry i've been away for the past couple of days, i'd be interested on seeing what your findings are on how it handles games. I still haven't decided on buying a laptop yet so I guess any information or findings would be greatly appreciated :)

well it's dusty here + I have a cat so I'll be taking advantage of any easy cleaning I can get. I have to take about 16 screws to get at the fans on my MBP to clean them :(

Seany: Sure thing. At the moment though I'm trying to remove all the bloat they give you (f*****g norton internet security of all things) and get everything set up. The only game I have that might be taxing on it is Far Cry 2. I haven't got the Crysis 3 beta, (didn't bother with it since I played the alpha and I'm guessing that won't run anymore)

All in all I'm not too disappointed in it so far. Like I said the built quality isn't s***, it just reflects the price. It feels really solid under the hands, just typing on this thread though I can feel it getting warm so I don't know how it's going to be for long gaming sessions.

The only gripe I have is the screen is 15" and 1920 x 1080. The text is too small for my broken eyes to read :p

The only gripe I have is the screen is 15" and 1920 x 1080. The text is too small for my broken eyes to read :p

Yeah, that's really a windows fault, even in windows 8 it's not really fixed.. sure the tiles help but anything that's in a browser you gotta zoom, or a word doc, or anything. Apple really knew what they were doing when they put in a scaling thing. It's my one point that apple has clearly over microsoft in that regard.

It's not even like it was inconceivable that by 2008 people would have 30" monitors with 2500x1600 res, or 15" with 1920x1200. But still they decided to do nothing about scaling their UI. Because people had these things and it was clear that it would become more common.

well. I just went played some cod 4 on it, doesn't actually run all that well to be honest. 1920 x 1080, not quite full but not quite medium settings, around 80fps average I guess but really drops down when there's lots of action on the screen and gets choppy. CPU got up to 90 degrees celsius so the cooling in this thing is utter s***. I mean cod 4 is how many years old now? S*** should run at 1000000000000000fps on a modern video card.

Body of it gets really warm, not nearly as hot as my macbook pro but that's because the MBP is aluminium and is like holding your hand on a frying pan. It's uncomfortable and makes your palms sweatty, even after only a few minutes.

CPU got up to 90 degrees celsius so the cooling in this thing is utter s***. I mean cod 4 is how many years old now? S*** should run at 1000000000000000fps on a modern video card.Body of it gets really warm, not nearly as hot as my macbook pro but that's because the MBP is aluminium and is like holding your hand on a frying pan. It's uncomfortable and makes your palms sweatty, even after only a few minutes.

This is the current issue I have with my laptop at the moment. It currently gets really hot which makes gaming for extended periods really hard to do. I have tried everything from fans to cooling pads near it to keep it cool. I see that CoD doesn't run like s*** but should be running alot faster then that so its issues with the CPU bottlenecking i assume that causes the fps loss/issues when game gets hectic. As anyone will tell you gaming on a laptop was never meant to happen. Love to hear some other experiences with a few newer games to see the current gen framerates.

yeah I installed farcry 2, then decided to see what "battery calibration" was. Now it looks like ima have to leave it overnight like my macbook does and it figures out the health of the battery. Won't be any more tests tonight. I'll try farcry 2 tomorrow, and set up a couple of games on the MBP and on this thing and try to configure them the same. Might post my own thread about it, might not. I'm not really that good at reviews of stuff.

I just keep comparing it to my old toshiba x200. My brother now has that tihng and the CPU stays around 60 - 70 while in games, the speakers on it are amazing (4 on top + subwoofer underneath, in a LAPTOP). The trouble with it was, it was unstable and I don't have the time to pull things apart and fix them. He took it to bits, more heatsink paste and now it's a good laptop (although does still crash occasionally).

I've never heard sound from a laptop as good as that thing had. It also apparently plays farcry 3, probably not as well as a PC but he says it runs (not sure what settings). And that's only an 8700M GT video card I believe.

If you have any specific questions about it, send me a PM as I think this thread has run its course and I won't be posting any kind of review thread because there's probably a million of them already on youtube / the interwebs.

If you plan on getting one, I suggest getting a USB keyboard as well. I find it to be infinitely more comfortable and also the laptop can get as hot as it wants and you won't feel it. I use some cheap one on my MBP by "emprex" but it's a damn good keyboard.

Edit: BTW thanks for that whoop, i've been thinking about getting a gaming laptop towards the end of the year to make LANs easier (i'm constantly borrowing my mates gf's laptop when i go over kicking her to the PS3). So the info is good.

My MBP regularly reaches the 100 even mark while iMovie is doing its thing, also while gaming in windows it gets really hot.

I would say it's more to do with the ridiculous slim designs. My Toshiba stayed cooler because the thing was almost 2 inches thick and weighed a tonne so it probably had massive heat sinks. It had a separate fan for the video card and CPU whereas this one only has one fan for both by the looks of that picture.

Also anyone thinking of upgrading the RAM or hard drive later? Forget about it. The base panel is all one piece and there's a warranty sticker over one of the screws so any user upgrades will void your warranty. lolwut.